As a few of you already know, I left for the Kokoda Track on the 20th of April. I was given this opportunity by my Mum who thought it a good Christmas pressie for my Dad, Brother and I – She was spot on. It was the most expensive pressie I’ve had, on my part that is. I had to get a passport sorted, that didn’t take long and wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be, then there was visa fees, spending money, updating equipment etc...
We started training in the forest behind our place, some of the vicco’s would know the hill, we climbed it before heading out to the water hole that Heath nearly drowned his subi in…
Anyway, we were a little anxious that our training wasn’t enough – we had been doing it when we could and always wore a 20kg pack.
So, Monday morning we got the earliest flight from Melbourne to Brisbane, this is how it started:
We flew with the company that’s blue but their planes are red… Once in at Brisbane we got our luggage, just made the train before it left for the international terminal. I’m sure we were the last to check in, our flight was in a half hour. I got my passport stamped for the first time as I passed through customs – pleasant mob they are.
We then got on an old 767 to Port Moresby. We had a good flight. Once in Moresby we had a long wait for passport checks then luggage collection then through their customs. Once outside the heat and humidity hit us like a smack in the face. On our way to the hotel I got a bit of culture shock with the amount of people milling around, the road conditions and the general look of poverty that most of the locals probably faced.
We over-nighted at a hotel that was more like a compound. The next morning we were off on a “good bus” that had tattered seats, a set of dicky seats that folded down across the isle, had a missing wheel nut off each left wheel and every light on the rear end had a cracked or missing lense. Good times!
We first headed off to the War Cemetery at Bonana (I think). Quite a moving place, 3000 soldiers were buried here, some of them unknown:
Then we headed off to Ower’s Corner where the start of our Trek was to begin. Along the way we had to travel on a “dirt” road – it had been raining earlier in the week and the road was quite soft. The driver knew his bus and got us through some situations that you would normally have thought a bus could not get through and most of the time he kept traction. There was only one occasion that we had to get out and lend a hand, this is how you 4wd a 2wd bus:
And these are the “special” offroading tyres they use in PNG:
A short down hill walk and we were at the beginning of the Kokoda Track. It is officially called the Kokoda Trail for some reason. Track is the Australian terminology but it wasn’t documented through the war with “track”.
The arches with Dad and Bros:
The first big river crossing, and the only one we had to get this wet with:
^ I was initially disappointed that I was not allowed to carry my pack on my shoulder like the porters did – half way across while losing traction I was glad I didn’t have my pack on my shoulder… Bros found a deep spot and went right under, he kept his boots dry though.
These were some of the track conditions we were “up against” – the april time of year is near the end of their wet season, a good time to go in my opinion. There was only a few days without any rain. Here’s a pic of the track:
)!
